I am alone again

My friends have pushed off, back to Singapore. Both of them I will probably not see for a while, chances are that one I might not see for years. Last night I went home alone, I slept in the room alone and I got up alone. A few weeks ago that didn’t bother me one bit, but last night it was really hard. At the moment in time where I needed some company, unfortunately the company I’m in had to depart.

The problem is, that if I didn’t care about being alone no doubt I wouldn’t be alone for very long at all. I’d end up speaking to people within no time and hanging out with them. The thing is, when I do care about being alone and I actually want to be in company people to hang out with are a lot harder to find.

It’s completely the fault of my mood, of course. When I’m up and happy, people want to be around me. When I’m down and out, people have better things to do. And even that isn’t fair. Yesterday I went to the night market here in town and spoke to at least a dozen people.

There was the Japanese couple who I talked into sharing a rickshaw into town with me, so that we all had to pay less. There was the three Australian hippies who were discussing how much Goa had changed and who’s conversation I joined in on. There was the people from Bangalore I knew who walked up to me to say hi. And there was the group of Israelis I had met on the beach who I hung out with for a few hours.

The truth is probably that I’m not seeking their kind of company. The conversations seemed stilted and not completely natural. I wasn’t in my normal talkative form, where the words flow naturally. I didn’t feel that either they or I were making a significant contribution to the other’s evening.

It’s funny. When these two mates left last time from Sri-Lanka, I also crashed out. For two weeks I locked myself in my room and just read. That was at the beginning of the trip. Interesting, that now near the end the same thing seems to be happening. Maybe this is a good time to just sit on the beach, read and work on my writings.

But somehow that doesn’t feel right. These might well be the last two weeks of my last world trip. After this it might well never be possible for me to do this again. I certainly don’t hope that’s the case, as these trips have always made such a massive difference to the way I operate and the way I interact with the world around me, but I must accept that that might be the case.

Do I really, in that case, want to spend my last bit of time in voluntary isolation? Do I really want to lock myself away again and remember the end of my trip alone? Or would I rather do something with my time that I’ll remember more fondly?

It is, of course, a semi-rhetorical question. I shouldn’t waste these last few days. I should fight my way out of this pit and make these last days matter; now to find a way out of this pit.

Maybe that Russian folk-tale I was told might help. ‘A hedgehog is walking through the forest, when he falls into a pit. He sits at the bottom and looks at the sky. One day passes, then another. Finally the hedgehog says ‘what am I doing at the bottom of this pit?’ He then climbs out, to continue his walk.’